Taiwan holds 1st large, live-fire drill in 5 years

TAIPEI, Taiwan—Taiwan has held its first large-scale live-fire military exercise in five years, as President Ma Ying-jeou called on soldiers to maintain their “sense of crisis” as China builds up its military.

The president told the troops that Taiwan must reinforce its defenses to build a credible deterrent in the face of cascading defense expenditures from Beijing.

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Relations across the Taiwan Strait are the best since Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. But Beijing still claims the democratic island and threatens to use force if Taiwan moves to make its de facto independence permanent.

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